Two Forgivenesses
Matthew 18:21 Then Peter approached him and asked, “Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? As many as seven times?”
22 “I tell you, not as many as seven,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven.
23 “For this reason, the kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 When he began to settle accounts, one who owed ten thousand talents was brought before him. 25 Since he did not have the money to pay it back, his master commanded that he, his wife, his children, and everything he had be sold to pay the debt.
26 “At this, the servant fell facedown before him and said, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27 Then the master of that servant had compassion, released him, and forgave him the loan.
28 “That servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him, started choking him, and said, ‘Pay what you owe!’
29 “At this, his fellow servant fell down and began begging him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ 30 But he wasn’t willing. Instead, he went and threw him into prison until he could pay what was owed. 31 When the other servants saw what had taken place, they were deeply distressed and went and reported to their master everything that had happened. 32 Then, after he had summoned him, his master said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. 33 Shouldn’t you also have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ 34 And because he was angry, his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he could pay everything that was owed. 35 So also my heavenly Father will do to you unless every one of you forgives his brother or sister from your heart.”
I want to start out by making sure you understand in terms of today’s money the difference between the two debts that were owed. The one servant – who ended up to be a wicked servant – owed the king, the master, 10,000 talents, which today would be somewhere close to 8 billion dollars. That’s huge! And this debt was forgiven him; totally erased. The other servant was indebted to the wicked servant to a tune of 100 denarii. In today’s terms that would be around 13 thousand dollars. That is a very significant debt, nothing to sneeze at. But – and this is one of the main points of the parable – this amount is next to nothing compared to what the wicked servant owed the king. The wicked servant owed the king 600,000 times more than what the second servant owed the first!
And yet, at first, originally, the wicked servant had been forgiven his incomprehensible and unpayable debt to the king.
This parable is about forgiveness of sin. Two kinds of forgiveness: forgiveness we receive from God and forgiveness we are to give to others.
Let me start with the forgiveness you are to give to others who sin against you. Not forgiving others who sin against us can easily sneak up on us, can go unnoticed, may not even be realized to be a sin, and is easily be justified. And that is because of a sense of justice that we all have. We all by nature understand the difference between right and wrong to a significant degree. A sin is committed against you or another person, and you cry, “Foul! I have been wronged.” Or “That person has been wronged.” You understand an injustice has been committed.
Christians and the Bible are opposed to true injustice1. There are all kinds of passages saying so. For example, Jeremiah 22:3 says, “This is what the Lord says: Administer justice and righteousness. Rescue the victim of robbery from his oppressor. Don’t exploit or brutalize the resident alien, the fatherless, or the widow. Don’t shed innocent blood…” Micah 6:8 says, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”
All people have an inner sense of justice. And it can and should kick in when true injustices occur2.
Unfortunately, our justice can often be corrupted or misused – guided and influenced by the sinful flesh or Satan or the world – or all three! The word of God and the example of God tells you to forgive when someone sins against you. Nowhere in Scripture do you have the command or right not to forgive. But here is what happens. A person sins against you and get angry; or, as St. Paul says, you “take into account a wrong suffered” (1 Cor. 13); or you tell another person how so-and-so has sinned against you so the other person knows how sinful that person is; or you gossip about that person; or you fail to be merciful and kind to that person who has done you wrong when you could have been merciful and kind; or bitterness is stirred up within you whenever you think of what that person did to you or said to you. All these are ways of expressing not forgiving as you should.
But forgiveness is what you are to give to the one who sins against you.
But what about a time limit? Should or can forgiveness toward another run out? Does it have a statute of limitations? This is the question that Peter asks: “Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? As many as seven times?” In other words, “How long do I have to continue to forgive a person who just keeps sinning against me? It seems to me, seven times is generous.” And Jesus answers, “I tell you, not as many as seven, but seventy times seven.” In other words, there are to be no limitations on forgiveness. It is not supposed to expire no matter how often or how severely a person sins against you.
And to make the point crystal clear, and to give us the greatest motivation to have endless forgiveness toward others, Jesus gives us the example of the king in our text and the servant who owes him billions of dollars, compared to the other servant who owes the wicked servant only several thousand dollars.
Think of someone who has sinned against you, perhaps seriously, maybe not so seriously, but one who has made life difficult for you for a day or for many days (maybe years!), causing you pain or frustration. They were unkind to you, said things to you, turned on you, were unfaithful to you, treated you as if you did not matter or like dirt, took advantage of you. It might be a spouse, or a former spouse. It might be a child or parent. It could be a brother or a sister. It might be a friend, a stranger, maybe in the car next to you, an enemy, someone at work, a student at school, a church member, a pastor. Somebody who did something they should not have done to you and you feel it personally.
How many times have they done this to you? Seven? Seventy times seven – 490 times? Even if that is the case, forgiveness is still to be given to them by you.
Now, think about how many times you have sinned against God, the true King. Seven? Seventy times seven? No. It is right to say your sins are pretty close to endless. You have piled up a debt 600,000 times greater than any debt a person on earth has piled up against you. And your debt toward God is an incomprehensible and unpayable in this life.
Your sins against God are sensed very keenly and personally by God. He is not an impersonal God as if sins do not affect him. All your sins against him are very personal. They wound him.
But here’s the important question: Does God, the King, have a limit to his forgiveness toward you? When Jesus was bleeding on the cross, was he carefully measuring the amount of blood he shed so at some point during his crucifixion he could stop his bleeding because he only wanted to forgive some of your sins, most of your sins, but not all of them? Was he keeping track of his time on the cross so at some point he would come down from the cross because he was not willing to forgive all your sins?
And the answer is no.
In one of the most beautiful hymns of confession of sins in our hymnary, we ask as we sing, “Wilt Thou forgive that sin, where I begun, Which is my sin, though it was done before? Wilt Thou forgive those sins through which I run, And do run still, though still I do deplore?” (498:1).
Will he? And the answer is yes.
For Jesus, though he could have, did not stop his bleeding. The Son of God, though he could have, did not come down from the cross. “He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” (Phil. 2:8). All your sins are forgiven. Every single last one. Even the ones that are still to come. His forgiveness is endless.
What does this mean? The wicked servant did not learn what it meant. The king, his master said to him, “‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Shouldn’t you also have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And because he was angry, his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he could pay everything that was owed.”
This servant who had been forgiven his entire debt of $6 billion, said, “I will ignore the king’s mercy and forgiveness. I will abandon repentance and trust in this merciful King and Master, and therefore I will not be moved to do for others as he has done for me.” And so he loses the forgiveness he had previously been given, and ends up having to pay it himself. And that would take an eternity.
Do not forget what this means: “So also my heavenly Father will do to you unless every one of you forgives his brother or sister from your heart.”
It is not easy to forgive. And when we fall short, we own up and confess our sins, knowing and believing that our entire debt has been paid by Jesus. We continue, through repentance and faith, to receive forgiveness. And then we follow Jesus. For in him we the best example and the best motivation.
Back in 2015, a man by the name of Dylan Roof walked into a Bible study at Emmanuel Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina. They welcomed him warmly. But then soon after he joined them, he got up and shot and killed nine of the eleven, including the pastor. By his own admission, he was a racist. He was white and they were all black and therefore, contrary to true justice, they were not worthy of life. But two days later something very strange happened. The families and survivors were allowed to confront Dylann Roof via video, and the overwhelming message of these Christians – mothers, wives, fathers, and others – was, “We forgive you.” Amazing. Amazing grace.
“Let all bitterness, anger and wrath, shouting and slander be removed from you, along with all malice. And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ.” (Eph. 4:31-32).
Amen.
1We need to understand that not everything that is called “injustice” these days is true injustice. Real wrong, and therefore real injustice, is not based on the color of your skin is, not on the fact you may be male, not that you recognize the reality of only two genders, not on the basis that you are a Christian who confesses that only Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. None of those are injustices, in fact, they are just the opposite. No, real right and wrong, and therefore real justice and injustice, is from God himself – not man – and God’s absolute statement regarding right and wrong is found in his infallible word. His word is sufficient. This is why conferences like the one some of us attended yesterday are very important. They help us to remain faithful to God’s word, all the while reminding us to love our neighbor as ourselves, whoever he is.
And, yes, you may have certain benefits (or privileges) that others do not, because of where you live, because of your gender, because of your age, because of your Christian religion, and perhaps because of other things. But those advantages or blessings or privileges are not wrong in and of themselves. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise. For the advantages or privileges I have here, I would not have in another country, like Afghanistan, or North Korea, or Nigeria, or even countries like Germany or Japan. Benefits you have right now, you may not have in another place, in another culture, under different circumstances. Others may have them instead. And this is not wrong.
However, here is a really important point: those advantages or blessings or privileges become wrong when they are used to prevent others from hearing about the true God and his work (1st and 2nd commandments), to deny Christians the assembling together to worship (3rd commandment), to deny children the gift of being raised by a mother and father (4th commandment), to deprive anyone of the gift of life and health or to justify hate (5th commandment), to undermine the sacred institution of marriage between a man and a woman (6th commandment), to deprive another of property, money, or work (7th commandment), to reject that another person – regardless of who he is – by nature has equal and invaluable sanctity (8th commandment), or in order to use another person for selfish or inhumane purposes (10th commandment). Then benefits and privileges are wrongly used.
2Here is a good example of where I have seen justice kick in: There are several pro-life groups that interview the person on the street – usually young adults – and ask them the question, “What do you think about abortion?” The answer often is, “A woman should have the right to an abortion because it’s her body.” In other words, they have a sense of justice that it would be wrong to force someone to do something against her will because it is her body, even though it is an incomplete sense of justice. And then these same young people are shown a video by a former abortionist who had performed over 1,200 abortions describing, with pictures, what actually takes place in an abortion. At that point, a more complete understanding of injustice kicks in and they immediately say something like, “I had no idea. This is horrifying. A human life is being destroyed.” My point is when people see a wrong being committed, justice can kick in. But not always, for there are many who remain hardened.
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